The Left’s Misguided Debate Over Kamala Harris

Back in January, after Donald Trump had nominated Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, I uncovered a leaked document from the California attorney general’s office that showed OneWest Bank repeatedly broke foreclosure laws under Mnuchin’s six-year reign as CEO and then chairman. Prosecutors in the state’s Justice Department wanted to file a civil enforcement action against the company for “widespread misconduct,” but the attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris, overrode the recommendation and declined to prosecute. She never gave a reason.

Former CIA spy believes Putin intentionally left paper trail from Trump Tower to the Kremlin

While President Donald Trump continues to deny that Russia was involved in hacking the 2016 election, intelligence agencies maintain they were and continue to be. One former CIA station chief believes the reports and warns that they show no sign of slowing.

In an NPR interview, Daniel Hoffman recalled his time spent at a U.S. diplomatic compound in Moscow. He warned that every American official should consider themselves a target.

Alex Jones hosts Russian ultra-nationalist to pressure Trump to fire McMaster

Alex Jones hosted a Russian ultra-nationalist this week to push President Donald Trump to fire his national security adviser — who has become a target of the so-called “alt-right.”

The InfoWars broadcaster invited Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin to discuss the “globalist” threats to Trump’s agenda — particularly national security adviser H.R. McMaster, reported Business Insider.

Vacationing like a 'real' man: Photos from Putin's macho holiday seen as part of re-election bid

It seems there is no such thing as too much of Vladimir Putin's bare chest.

For the second time in three days, the Kremlin has released video of the Russian president's recent macho holiday adventures in Siberia — with even more hunting, boating and underwater spearfishing — and plenty of new scenes of a shirtless Putin enjoying the outdoors.

'They're basically running hotels': Property management companies Airbnb's biggest winners

A small number of commercial property managers generate a majority of Airbnb's overall revenue, eating up available housing stock and driving up rent in Canada's three biggest cities, a new study from Montreal's McGill University concludes.

"Just 10 per cent of hosts account for a majority of the revenue and the nights booked on Airbnb consistently in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal," said the study's lead author, David Wachsmuth, a McGill professor of urban planning, in an interview on CBC Montreal's Daybreak.

How America Lost Its Mind

“You are entitled to your own opinion,
but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

—

“We risk being the first people in history to have been
able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive,
so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.”

— Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to
Pseudo-Events in America (1961)


When did America become untethered from reality?

Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year

Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of fossil fuels will cause enormous worldwide economic and social consequences.

Second, fossil fuels are expensive. Much of their costs are hidden, however, as subsidies. If people knew how large their subsidies were, there would be a backlash against them from so-called financial conservatives.

Deadly heat wave, nicknamed ‘Lucifer,’ engulfs Europe

A summer of record-breaking heat continues around the world, as Europe sweats under a heatwave so intense locals have dubbed it “Lucifer.”

The heat wave, which stretches from Eastern Europe to parts of France, Italy, and Spain, has already caused at least six deaths, slowed traffic, and sparked wildfires. Over the weekend, temperatures in southern Spain reached high as 111°F, while the south of France saw temperatures near 104°F.

As Venezuela turns bleak, where should young, left-wing idealists turn?

Among the secondary tragedies emanating from the current political, social, and economic mess in Venezuela is this: for young, left-wing idealists elsewhere, a magnet for their hopes is fading. I think each generation deserves a chance to believe in the actualization of the dreams and ideals they discover in adolescence. It gives them something to work with as they age and evolve.

What’s It Like to See a Democracy Destroyed?

What’s it like to watch a country implode? To see a democracy destroyed and an economy crater?

Since 2014, American journalist Hannah Dreier has documented just that in Venezuela, once one of the world’s wealthiest nations and still home to what are believed to be the planet’s largest oil reserves. She wrote for the Associated Press about what it was like to live in a place with the world’s highest murder rate—and the world’s highest rate of inflation. About the breakdown of hospitals and schools, and how the obesity epidemic that plagued a rich country was quickly replaced with people so hungry they were rooting through the garbage on her doorstep.

The U.S. Has More to Lose Than Russia in Spy Expulsions

In December of last year, two Russian intelligence officers met in the Washington, D.C., area with a potential source they hoped had valuable information regarding the inner workings of the Obama White House. At the meeting, the Russians probed for clues on what steps the Obama Administration—then in its final days—might take to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election.

According to a senior U.S. official, unbeknownst to the Russians, their source was not actually a White House mole but a U.S. counterintelligence asset. Of the options that the Obama Administration was considering, none trickled back to the Russians.

The Left’s Supporting Role in American Hate Theater

On the second Saturday in July, more than 1,000 people showed up in a small Southern city to shout down the Ku Klux Klan. That very same afternoon, up North, left-wing counter-protesters chased a band of alt-right Proud Boys out of a public park where they’d tried to rally. It’s been like that throughout this Summer of Hate, fifty years removed from the so-called Summer of Love. Wherever they’ve tried to assemble, both old and new-school white supremacists have found themselves routinely outnumbered, outshouted, out-organized, and out-brawled by the left.

When it talks like a fascist, walks like a fascist and squawks like a fascist ...

They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I used to think that referred to politicians who achieved a frightening level of leverage over their societies. No holds barred, no limits to their authority. Chancellor Hitler, Prime Minister Mussolini, President Vladimir Putin. Dictators.

But given the nightmare that is the Trump regime, I have revisited that interpretation of the cliche. It is getting clearer by the day that power also corrupts those who see the benefit of serving any regime, no matter how dark it may be.

The Rise of the Violent Left

Since 1907, Portland, Oregon, has hosted an annual Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival had included a parade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, had taken part. This April, all of that changed.

In the days leading up to the planned parade, a group called the Direct Action Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned, “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.” The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP itself, but to “fascists” who planned to infiltrate its ranks. Yet it also denounced marchers with “Trump flags” and “red maga hats” who could “normalize support for an orange man who bragged about sexually harassing women and who is waging a war of hate, racism and prejudice.” A second group, Oregon Students Empowered, created a Facebook page called “Shut down fascism! No nazis in Portland!”

UN Syria investigator quits over concern about Russian obstruction

Obstructions placed in the way of Syrian war crimes prosecutions by the United Nations and Russia contributed to the decision of Carla Del Ponte, a renowned war crimes prosecutor, to resign as one of three members of a UN commission of inquiry.

Her decision, announced on Sunday in Switzerland, has dealt a heavy blow to the commission’s credibility. Del Ponte joined in September 2012, bringing her considerable experience as a war crimes prosecutor in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to the civil war in Syria. However, she said her role had come to be an alibi for inaction.